Movie making for the broke

Movie Making for the Broke was a class we took, taught by artist and filmmaker Alex Kopps - part of the Make Something series happening last month at RVCA. (I just found out they pronounce it "rooca"). It was a super fun class, and the main point of it was that you can make anything with what you've got. Don't wait until you have the best equipment and don't put off your project just because all you have is a crappy digital camera that can shoot 3 mins of video.

So here's how it went down.

Each person in the class had to come up with one word that would end up being part of the film's title. Class was divided into two teams. Our team was responsible for putting the words together to make the title, then illustrating each word. The girl above made a nice bowl of chili. The title? Mister Agent Terror Gnar Safari Chili Faction is a Gigantic Seafoam Prune Chief

Jay illustrated GNAR

Now for filming the title. Each word was filmed with Alex's little digital camera, stop-action style. For a make-shift tri-pod, they taped the camera to a stick, which was taped to the chair.

The other team was responsible for making the waves and background for our surfing. They did an amazing job.

Everyone had to get on this broken surfboard in the green zone. Starting things off with a zen pose. That young man on the board was cool, he said he liked making skate videos.

Mister Kopps

We filmed everything in sequence to make Alex's job of editing much easier. Here is the final filming of the day, of the names of everyone who made the film.

When the class was ending, the Japanese Motors showed up because Alex Kopps had to go direct the video for their second single. Kopps is a calm, cool, friendly and funny guy. He said it would actually be his first time directing a music video and he didn't seem too worried. Al Knost rolled his equipment through the room in a baby carriage. Can't wait to see that video and there's a lot of talk about how good their new album is.

And speaking of videos, would you like to see what we made that day? Jay has a cool post about it and you can view the film on his blog. I hope you enjoy it because we all took it really, really seriously.